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Senators' early surge leads to 5-4 victory over Penguins in first-round opener

PITTSBURGH - One game, and the Pittsburgh Penguins already know this. Nothing comes easy for a defending Stanley Cup champion, not even a playoff series opener against a seemingly overmatched opponent.

Erik Karlsson and Chris Kelly scored on power plays in the second period and the Ottawa Senators ignored their underdog tag and Pittsburgh's recent playoff success, surprising the Penguins with a 5-4 victory in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference first-round series Wednesday night.

Evgeni Malkin scored twice following penalties on Peter Regin, the first barely three minutes into the game, but the fourth-seeded Penguins looked mostly flat and uninspired for long periods in beginning their bid to become the NHL's first repeat champion since Detroit in 1998.

"We can't hang our heads and just say something (like) 'We didn't execute,"' forward Alexei Ponikarovsky said. "We just have to do a better job. We've got to work and win the rest of them."

Sidney Crosby, who piled up 15 points in his final five regular-season games, had three assists but was held without a shot until getting two in the third period. Ottawa constantly matched shutdown defencemen Anton Volchenkov and Chris Phillips against the Crosby line.

With their star so tightly covered, the Penguins - seemingly unsettled by Ottawa's defensive pressure - were held to a single shot during a stretch lasting 21 minutes 53 seconds following Malkin's first goal.

The Senators, one of the biggest underdogs of the first-round, went from being down a goal to being up 3-1 during that period as Regin, Chris Neil and Kelly scored - quieting a standing room crowd of 17,132 that clearly arrived expecting another long playoff run by the home team.

"For sure we'd like to get to their d-men and have some speed through the neutral zone, but that starts in other places, too, and we have got to get there," Crosby said.

Goalie Brian Elliott gave up four goals on 21 shots in his playoff debut, but made several big stops on Ponikarovsky and Malkin in the second period as the Penguins pressed to tie it following Malkin's second goal, at 10:22.

Instead, the 19-year-old Karlsson restored Ottawa's two-goal lead less than three minutes later, collecting a rebound of a shot from the left point by Matt Cullen that rebounded off Mike Fisher in front and wristing it into a wide-open corner of the net to make it 4-2.

No coincidence, the Senators said, that rookies Karlsson and Regin scored in their playoff debuts.

"They just feed off one another, if one scores, the other one's got to score to match," Neil said. "They room together, they're inseparable. We call them the twins."

On this night, they were twice the trouble for Pittsburgh.

"They (the Senators) made it very difficult, and their forwards were coming back hard (on defence)," Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said. "They had five men around the net and made it tough to get to the net."

The fifth-seeded Senators also got a fortuitous bounce on Kelly's goal at 1:20 of the second that put them up 3-1. Chris Campoli was attempting to wrap the puck around the boards, but it took an odd deflection directly to Kelly close to the net with no defender near him. Kelly also had two assists.

"That bounce they got on that third goal ended up being the difference," Crosby said.

Pittsburgh made several more pushes, with Craig Adams getting a goal at 5:16 of the third after playing all 82 regular-season games without scoring. He scored three goals during last season's playoffs.

Again, the Senators answered as former Penguins agitator Jarkko Ruutu accepted Neil's giveback pass to beat Marc-Andre Fleury on a wrist shot at 9:40 of the third. Ruutu began the rush by controlling the puck along the boards and feeding it up ice. Fleury faced 26 shots during a shaky performance.

"I think there's a couple (of goals) he's going to be thinking about, is going to want back. He knows he has to be a lot better to give us a chance," Bylsma said.

Alex Goligoski cut it to one goal again by scoring with 2:14 remaining, but the Penguins couldn't tie it even as their white shirt-wearing fans stood, chanting, "Let's Go, Pens!" for most of the final two minutes.

The Penguins won seven of eight playoff rounds during the previous two seasons, losing only to Detroit in the 2008 finals, but this time they almost seemed to relax after Malkin scored off Sergei Gonchar's pass on their first power play of the post-season. The goal came almost too easy and, rather than building on the early momentum, Pittsburgh allowed it to slip away and Ottawa tied it on Regin's goal at 8:45 off a long rebound.

"I think we can to try to build off this," Spezza said. "If we focus on the short-term and we're not looking too far ahead, we can slowly creep up on them."

NOTES: Elliott is 3-0 in Mellon Arena. ... Crosby has two goals in 17 regular-season games against Ottawa, the fewest he has scored against an Eastern Conference opponent. ... The team that won Game 1 won both Senators-Penguins series in 2007 and 2008. The teams split, with Ottawa winning in five in '07 and Pittsburgh sweeping the following year. ... Five of the last 10 Stanley Cup winners were gone by the end of the first round or did not make the playoffs. ... The Penguins were 2-2 in Game 1s last spring. They came back to beat Washington in the second round and Detroit in the finals. ... Pittsburgh had won its last five home playoff games. ... Ottawa was 2 of 3 on the power play after ranking No. 20 during the season, while Pittsburgh - ranked 19th - was 2 of 5.

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Coyotes’ Cunningham alert, awake and joking with teammates, but remains in hospital

There’s still no word as to what exactly caused Coyotes AHL captain Craig Cunningham to collapse on ice, but the 26-year-old was in contact with teammates and cracking jokes earlier this week.

More than two weeks after collapsing on the ice ahead of an AHL game between the Coyotes and Jets AHL affiliates, news has come that Craig Cunningham is starting to get back to his old self.

According to Tucson’s KVOA, Cunningham spoke with two teammates, Brandon Burlon and Christian Fisher, via FaceTime earlier this week, and both said that things are starting to look up for the 26-year-old Cunningham.

Fisher added that it was nice to see Cunningham, the captain of the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate Tucson Roadrunners, smiling again. But he wasn’t just smiling, he was also trying to have a good time with his teammates while hinting that he wants to get back on the ice.

“He was cracking jokes just as if he were here the next day," Fisher told KVOA. "It was pretty funny. He said he wanted us to come pick him up and take him to the rink. He was joking around. Stuff like that.”

The mystery still remains as to what caused Cunningham’s collapse, however. It came just moments before the game was set to start and resulted in medical staff in the building cutting away his equipment in order to attend to him. Cunningham ended up leaving the ice on a stretcher, was transported to hospital and he remained in critical but stable condition for much of the past two weeks.

Still, though, Burlon and Fisher said that there’s no “definitive answer” as to what caused Cunningham’s medical emergency. That’s more than all right with both players, too, so long as Cunningham’s health is starting to look up.

"What we do know is that he is doing well and we are moving forward here," Fisher told KVOA. "Hopefully, he will start the road to recovery now.”

Cunningham has suited up for 319 AHL games over the course of his career, netting 101 goals and 203 points, as well as scoring an additional three goals and eight points in 63 NHL games. He was drafted 97th overall by the Bruins in 2010, but was picked up by Arizona off waivers from Boston during the 2014-15 season.

Blackhawks emergency backup Eric Semborski gets his own rookie card

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Blackhawks emergency backup Eric Semborski gets his own rookie card

Eric Semborski landed himself the opportunity of a lifetime when he strapped on the pads as an emergency backup for the Blackhawks, and now Topps has commemorated the moment with a Semborski trading card.

Eric Semborski’s dream came true when he stepped on the ice as an NHL goaltender, albeit an emergency backup, on Dec. 3, and now he’s got an incredible piece of memorabilia to show for it.

Just days after the 23-year-old made his rookie debut, trading card company Topps has unveiled the official Eric Semborski rookie card. That’s right: the 23-year-old has his very own trading card. The card is part of Topps’ NOW series, which features milestone or memorable moments and are made available shortly after the achievement.

Semborski’s stint as the Blackhawks emergency goaltender came due to regular starting netminder Corey Crawford was sent to hospital to undergo an appendectomy. The Blackhawks were scrambling to find a replacement for Crawford, and a backup for Scott Darling, when they started asking around to find an emergency amateur netminder to fill in.

Semborski, a former goaltender at Temple University, was working with children at the Flyers’ practice facility when he was called to sign on for emergency duty. Hilariously, Semborski wore a Blackhawks No. 50 jersey — which most will recognize as Crawford’s number — when he took the ice for warmup. Of the chance to stop NHL shots in warmup, Semborski said it was the best moment of his life.

Possibly the only thing that could have made the moment better was if Semborski actually got into the game and, as it turns out, that was very nearly the case. Post-game, Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville said that had the Flyers scored on the empty net to stretch their lead in the Saturday afternoon contest, he would have thrown Semborski into the net for the final minute of the outing.

As for the card, there’s no chance it will be worth anything near what a Connor McDavid rookie card will be worth in a decade, but it’s certainly a nice piece of merchandise for the one-day NHL netminder.

Montreal can't panic over injuries to Galchenyuk and Desharnais

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Montreal can't panic over injuries to Galchenyuk and Desharnais

While the loss of the two centers is a crushing blow in the short-term, this team is positioned too well to lose assets in a hasty trade scenario

The Montreal Canadiens will be without top center Alex Galchenyuk and fellow pivot David Desharnais for at least six weeks, perhaps even eight. Both players sustained knee injuries in recent games and the news is obviously not good. But GM Marc Bergevin would make it even worse by jumping into a hasty trade.

True, the Habs now look skeletal down the middle (though Tomas Plekanec isn't a horrible choice for the top line and Andrew Shaw can help out), but this is a short-term problem. Montreal is the top team in the Eastern Conference right now and with netminder Carey Price, they can win more than a few games in the next month or so just on the strength of his gifted play. And the Shea Weber-led defense has been better than expected, so even if the Habs are super-boring and conservative until February, they'll get some results.

Will Montreal still be on top by then? Maybe not, but as long as they don't lose like, 20 games in a row, they'll still be in a playoff position with enough runway left to climb back up the rungs. And as the Los Angeles Kings have proven twice already, you can win the Stanley Cup as long as you get into the playoffs, particularly if your goalie is one of the best on the planet (caveat: being a great possession team helps and the Canadiens are only middling).

But a trade is not the way to go, particularly since the Canadiens aren't deep to begin with. They don't have many attractive pro prospects right now – unless they can drum up interest in a Charles Hudon or Nikita Scherbak – and their best recent draft pick is defenseman Mikhail Sergachev, who should be seen as untouchable. I mean, if Pittsburgh offers up Evgeni Malkin for the 2016 first-rounder and a couple other goodies, you make that trade – but I don't think that's going to happen.

If anything, Montreal needs to build their pipeline up, instead of taking assets away from it. The Canadiens ranked just 23rd in the NHL in our most recent Future Watch edition and Sergachev was the only pick they made in the first two rounds this summer. They do have two second-rounders for 2017 (their own and Washington's selection), but again: they need those.

Galchenyuk and Desharnais will be back and in all likelihood, the Canadiens will still be in a playoff position. The short-term may seem a little bleak, but the price of a quick patch isn't worth the long-term loss. Patience is a virtue here.

Prospect Need to Know: Brett Murray growing for Buffalo

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Prospect Need to Know: Brett Murray growing for Buffalo

The budding power forward is having a successful season with USHL Youngstown, with Penn State on the horizon. Learn about him and other future NHLers in our weekly wrap

The world junior camp rosters are really rolling out now and there have been some minor surprises. Sweden will not be taking a last look at 2017 draft prospects Timothy Liljegren and Erik Brannstrom on defense, while Russia is taking a pass on Columbus pick Vitalii Abramov, among others. And now we know that Nolan Patrick will not suit up for Canada, due to injury. But let's concentrate on the player around the prospect world that are having good weeks. As always, here's our wrap-up of who is making waves.

The Spotlight

Brett Murray, LW (Buffalo): We are just beginning to see what Murray is capable on the ice, but it's been a pretty good show already. The burgeoning power forward has the right frame at 6-foot-5 and 222 pounds and has put up 16 points in his first 22 USHL games with the Youngstown Phantoms. Now it's just a matter of speed for the Sabres' fourth-rounder.

“Being a bigger guy, my acceleration and quickness off the start is something I can work on," Murray said. "Always improving top speed in open-ice skating is a huge thing.”

With that foreboding frame, Murray can grow into a force once he puts it all together. The early results are encouraging and he already has championship experience from this past season, when he helped the CCHL's Carleton Place Canadians win their Jr. A title in Ontario's Ottawa region. In Youngstown, he's facing tougher competition and the stakes will rise again next year when he heads to Hockey Valley and the NCAA's Penn State Nittany Lions.

“It just seemed like the right fit," Murray said. "They have a new state-of-the-art facility and as a progression for me, just being in the gym every day with an elite strength and conditioning coach and nutritionist seemed like the best for me.”

So if everything goes according to plan, Buffalo will have a beast of a left winger once Murray is finished in the NCAA. He's already got the instincts to be a handful.

“I like to work the puck down low in the corners," he said. "Use my size and skill to create space for my linemates and myself.”

And with the World Jr. A Challenge coming up in Bonnyville, Alta., Murray is proof of what that tournament can do for a prospect that isn't necessarily on the mainstream radar. Murray played for Canada East last season and soaked in everything he could from international duty.

“I really enjoyed it," he said. "It was an excellent experience, matching myself up against top prospects from other countries and even my linemates.”

In The Pipeline

Sergei Zborovskiy, D (NY Rangers): Games don’t get much better than the seven-pointer Zborovskiy hung on poor Prince Albert in his Regina Pats’ 12-2 destruction. The big-bodied defenseman was all over the place, jumping into scoring positions and getting pucks to the net. He has also been invited to Russia’s final world junior camp.

Carter Hart, G (Philadelphia): It seems like I’m mentioning Hart a lot lately, but I can’t help it because he refuses to give up goals. Using structure and technique, the favorite heading into Canada’s WJC camp posted three straight shutouts before Medicine Hat finally dented the armor in his most recent game. Hart still got the win, though.

Guillaume Brisebois, D (Vancouver): Canada has a lot of options on the blueline, so it will be interesting to see if Brisebois can snag a spot. The Charlottetown Islanders rearguard has great size and skating ability, helping him to 17 points through 23 games. But he can also use his tools to shut players down and that might be his key to making the world juniors.

Henrik Borgstrom, C (Florida): He’s been great all year for NCAA Denver, but the announcement of Finland’s world junior roster gives us another reason to mention the speedy and talented freshman. Borgstrom has 16 points through 14 games with the Pioneers and Finland will need his offense with so many big names from last year’s squad unavailable.

Caleb Jones, D (Edmonton): Team USA named its preliminary world junior roster on Monday and it's looking like a solid crew. But who will step up on defense with so many options? Jones is one candidate, as his combination of physicality and skill make him dangerous. The Portland Winterhawks rearguard has an impressive 25 points in 28 WHL games this year.

2017 Draft Stars

Robert Thomas, C – London Knights (OHL): Thomas had one heckuva coming out party on the weekend, racking up five points for the Knights in a 6-2 win over Flint. Strong on his skates and blessed with some fantastic offensive moves, Thomas now has 30 points in 27 games on a deep team.

Owen Tippett, RW – Mississauga Steelheads (OHL): There is so much to like about Tippett’s game, from his size (6-foot-2, 204 pounds) to his skating to his shot. All of those were in full gear against Ottawa on the weekend, where Tippett popped in four points in a 6-3 victory.

Lias Andersson, C – HV 71 (SHL): One of three draft prospects to make Sweden’s final WJC camp roster, Andersson plays an excellent two-way game and already has chemistry with Carl Grundstrom and Elias Pettersson on the international stage. Back with HV 71, Andersson is one of the top-scoring junior-aged players in the SHL with eight points in 22 games.

Jayson Dobay, D – Thayer Academy Tigers (Mass. HS): An excellent skater with great offensive instincts, Dobay is a UMass commit and one to watch in the New England prep ranks this season. With six assists in his first three games for the Tigers, his campaign is off to a great start.

Jesse Bjugstad, D – Stillwater Ponies (Minn. HS): When you think of Minnesota high school defensemen, finesse and skating usually comes to mind. But Bjugstad can also play the game with an edge. The 6-foot-2, 185-pounder has great NHL pedigree (dad Scott, cousin Nick) and has kicked off the season with two goals in two games.